Dionne found out through an e-mail on Friday, that Education Minister Zach Churchill, had sent a letter to the Chair of HRSB, Dave Wright, calling to immediately stop all non-facility replacement school reviews.
“If my computer could have reached out and slapped me, I felt that it did. No ‘thank you very much for all the hard work you put into this.’ Just, ‘oh well! It’s not happening,'” Dionne said.
READ MORE: Nova Scotia’s early education minister hits pause on all school reviews
The decision comes nearly a month after a report for the Auburn Drive & Cole Harbour District Family of Schools was released.
The report recommended the consolidation of several schools throughout the two families, including the amalgamation of the student population for Cole Harbour District High School and Auburn Drive High School, to lessen the impact of a large drop in student population when the new Eastern Passage High School opens.
The review was initiated by the Halifax Regional School Board last September and included 17 schools in total.
While aging infrastructure and declining enrolment were some factors in launching the review, the main reason was the construction of the new high school in Eastern Passage.
READ MORE: Eastern Passage to get new high school
The high school is set to open in September 2018 and will severely impact the student population at Cole Harbour District High School.
Many parents are concerned the drop in enrolment will put the school’s ‘Skilled Trades Centre’ at risk of closing or moving.
“Cole Harbour High is going to lose over 400 students in that transaction. What’s going to happen to that building? $14 million was spent on that building to put in a trades school. What’s going to happen with all of this?” Dionne said.
Churchill said in an interview with Global News on Tuesday, that the decision to halt school reviews was part of the Liberal’s election campaign platform and the ‘pause’ is meant to ‘better inform’ school boards with new information, while an independent review of the education structure in Nova Scotia is completed.
“We really think it’s critical that the school boards have these important pieces of information before they make a final decision. That does not mean that all the work that has gone into the SOC, all the feedback that they’ve received from the community, won’t be used,” Minister Churchill said.
READ MORE: Review of how N.S. education system is administered to be finished by end of 2017
HRSB Chair, Dave Wright says Minister Churchill spoke with him before Wednesday’s board meeting and informed him that he ‘didn’t intend’ to impact the SOC’s final report.
“I spoke with the Minister actually about an hour ago and he reassured me that it was a temporary pause and that it was not intended to be anything to do with Halifax, he was unaware of Halifax’s ongoing review. I expressed my concerns and he made it clear that it was not the intention to impact Halifax in this way,” Wright said.
Dionne says she’s not ‘convinced’ Minister Churchill was ‘unaware’ of the review of the Cole Harbour and Auburn Drive families.
“I find it very hard to believe that he didn’t know that this review was going to be rolled out. I understand that they want to look at things differently in the future but when we were already at the end of our process and had turned our report into the Regional School Board, I think at that point there should have been some consideration given to that and maybe said, going forward we’re going to look at a different way of handling this process,” Dionne said.
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